Janssen Pharmaceuticals

Individual Opioid Injury Claim Types

A MASS TORT NEXUS OVERVIEW:

by John Ray

A great deal of media attention has focused on lawsuits filed by States, Counties and Cities against the manufacturers of opioids, yet less attention has been given to viable individual opioid patient claims against these same companies. This article is the second in a series published by Mass Tort Nexus to have you gain a better understanding of the vast number of opioid claims, which may be filed on behalf of individual victims of the opioid crisis. Please also read the first article in the series (link to the first article).

This article is intended to cover the major categories or types of potential opioid individual claims based on injury or adverse event type.

Overdose resulting in death

Overdose without death

Opioid Addiction

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

Birth Defects

Heart attack

Attend the July 20-22, 2018 Mass Tort Nexus Opioid Crisis Summit to learn more about what your firm can do to help individual victims of the opioid epidemic.

In addition to providing information related to the types of claims that may be brought against the opioid defendants on behalf of individual plaintiffs, you will also receive information related to marketing to obtain these clients, as well as vital information related to the complex issues related to qualifying clients for each category of opioid injury.

Opioid Litigation Individual Claims

Given the publicity surrounding the opioid crisis gripping our nation, most of the country is aware that opioid addiction and overdose risk is far greater than the opioid litigation defendants, their Key Opinion Leaders and Front Groups led us to believe.

The researchers at Mass Tort Nexus estimate that there are approximately 250,000 individuals and families with viable claims against the opioid litigation defendants; however, yet few firms have engaged in an effort to retain these clients and provide the legal representation they desperately need and deserve. This fact is somewhat astounding given that many of these potential plaintiffs have been represented by your personal injury firm in the past.

Overdose Resulting in Death

When an individual, often a juvenile, dies from an opioid overdose, family members are left behind to suffer the pain and costs.

Significant evidence exists to demonstrate that the opioid manufacturers negligently and wantonly deceived doctors and the public about the risks associated with opioids. They continued to do so, even after it was apparent that their deceptions were resulting in loss of life and other severe injuries caused by their products.

The potential number of wrongful death claims which could be brought against the opioid defendants, could exceed the total number of wrongful death claims brought for any other reason over the next decade.

Overdose Deaths Soared as Big Pharma Reaped the Profits

According to the National Institute for Drug Abuse revised report from March 2018, despite the efforts to stem the opioid crisis, 115 people in the United States die from an Opioid overdose every day.

Overdose deaths, once rare, are now the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., surpassing peak annual deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, guns and HIV infection.

More Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016 than the number of American lives lost in the entirety of the Vietnam War, which totaled 58,200.

Prescription opioid deaths account for the majority of the increase in overdose deaths since 1999. It is no coincidence that the astounding increase in drug over dose statics beginning in 1999 coincides with the opioid manufactures campaign (beginning in the late 1990s) to convince doctors, based on false information, that past concerns related to opioids were unwarranted.

The opioid manufacturers are accused of using big tobacco style techniques to increase the consumption (and their profits) from increased sales of opioids. The manufacturers are accused of taking a page from the big tobacco play book, using front groups and key opinion leaders in the health field to promote the narrative that the risk associated with opioids was not significant. The false narrative promoted by the opioid manufacturers has been unveiled at the cost of an enormous loss of human life and suffering.

The link between the success of the opioid manufacturers deceptions, and the devasting effects caused by their fraudulent acts can be seen in a single chart. As the opioid manufacturers made billions of dollars, individual patients relying on these companies paid the price.

Overdose Without Death

Opioid overdose deaths are devasting to the family of the victim. Opioid overdoses that do not result in death can be equally or even more devasting.

Victims of opioid overdoses often suffer brain damage, heart damage and other adverse events that will impact their lives and their families permanently.

In many cases, the financial and other damages caused by an overdose not resulting in death will exceed those of overdose cases resulting in death.

Opioid Addiction

Despite the opioid litigation defendants attempts to blame the victims and their doctors, the blame for the meteoric rise in opioid addiction coincided with the opioid manufacturers fraudulent practices designed to deceive doctors and the public about the risk of opioid use.

According to the CDC, by 2016 2.1 million Americans suffered from opioid addiction (opioid use disorder) and 2.1 million more Americans received their first opioid prescription in the same year, guaranteeing the continuation of the Country’s opioid addiction epidemic.

Not every opioid addict will have a viable claim for damages against the opioid manufacturers.

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

By 2012, the National Institute for Health had recognized a dramatic increase in Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) and the number of babies born with NAS has continued to increase since that time.

NAS occurs when a mother ingests opioids during pregnancy. Despite the risks associated with NAS and opioids, the opioid manufacturers are accused of aggressively promoting the use of opioids for pain commonly associated with pregnancy.

In addition to damage to the fetus before birth, opioid consumption during pregnancy often results in the infant being born addicted to opioids. The long term impact of NAS, often results in consequences that will plague the infant for the remainder of their lives.

Impaired cognitive abilities, severe behavioral issues, as well as an increased susceptibility to opioid use and addiction later in life are among a long list of complications associated with NAS.

Babies born with NAS and opioid related birth defects will often suffer from the day they are born until the day they die. The opioid defendant’s actions leading to the harm of infants should be a great source of shame for the opioid defendants; however, at this point, it appears that the opioid defendants have no shame. They continue to blame others for what is clearly their fault.

Birth Defects

There is significant support in the medical literature demonstrating opioids cause numerous severe birth defects.

One of the types of birth defects potentially caused by maternal opioid use is Tetralogy of Fallot.

Tetraolgy of Fallot is a heart defect that presents with some or all of the following defects in the infants heart: Overriding Aorta, Pulmonary Stenosis, Ventricular Septal Defect and Right Ventrial Hypertrophy.

Any of the defects associated with Tetraolgy of Fallot can result in infant death or the need for multiple cardiac surgeries and a permeant decrease in quality of life.

Neural Tube Defects may also be caused by maternal opioid use. Neural Tube Defects include Spina Bifida, Anencephaly and Encephalocele. Any of these birth defects can result in infant death, the need for multiple corrective surgeries over numerous years, as well as a permanent decrease in quality of life.

The above is only a partial list of birth defects which are associated with maternal opioid use. Given the increase in clinical interest and study surrounding opioid use, we expect to see additions to the medical literature demonstrating a large number of opioid associated birth defects, in the near future.

HEART ATTACK

There is overwhelming support in the medical literature demonstrating an increased incident of heart attack and other coronary issues associated with opioid use.

Cardiac damage and heart attack are common secondary issues related to opioid overdose; however, these adverse events appear to occur at a high rate in all opioid users without regard to the occurrence of an overdose. The increased risk appears to exist for patients that are predisposed to cardiac problems, as well as those who are not.

The conditions and adverse events associated with opioid use covered in this article do not include all the medical issues associated with opioid use.

Attend the July Mass Tort Nexus Opioid summit for a more through understanding of the medical conditions which may give rise to viable individual claims against the opioid defendants.

Individual Opioid Claims

Attend the July 20-22, 2018 Mass Tort Nexus Opioid Crisis Summit, to learn more about what your firm can do to help individual victims of the opioid epidemic.

The Opiod Crisis Summit will provide information related to the types of claims that may be brought against the opioid defendants on behalf of individual plaintiffs. Additionally, you will receive the proven criteria questions to obtain these clients, as well as vital information related to the complex issues related to qualifying clients for each category of opioid injury.

Many of your firms’ past P.I. clients may have claims against the opioid defendants

If your personal injury firm is not reaching out to its past clients and engaging in “public awareness marketing,” to obtain opioid clients, you are missing out on an opportunity to help the several hundred thousand individuals and families, that have potential claims against the opioid litigation defendants.

Personal Injury firms are in a unique position to help individuals harmed by the opioid epidemic, as many of these potential clients will have been previously represented by your firm. The first opioid prescription issued to an individual often occurs after a personal injury, such as an auto accident or work place injury. If your firm does not reach out to its past clients and offer to represent them in their potential claim against the opioid defendants, you can rest assured that other firms will eventually sign these cases.

Misconceptions about the Learned Intermediary Doctrine

Numerous firms have expressed concerns related to opioid individual cases being eviscerated by the Learned Intermediary Doctrine. This concern may arise from opioid individual cases from over a decade ago, that resulted in defense wins based on learned intermediary doctrine arguments.

Despite the defense Learned Intermediary Doctrine wins from over a decade ago, the researchers at Mass Tort Nexus and many others do not believe the Learned Intermediary Doctrine will be a significant factor in individual opioid cases filed now or in the future.

Why?

Much has occurred since the defense “Learned Intermediary Doctrine” wins of the past.

The FDA has issued multiple new Black Box Warnings for all opioid products and more are expected.

The FDA, CDC, NIH and even State Medical Boards have issued new guidelines for opioid prescribing and even stricter guidelines are expected in the future.

Considering all that is now known, it is unlikely that any physician would testify that he/she would continue to prescribe opioids, in the same manner as the past.

This is what the Surgeon General had to say

The current U.S. Surgeon General, Jerome Adams and immediate past U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy have issued statements containing language like the excerpt below, from a letter sent by Mr. Murphy to every prescriber in the United States:

“Nearly two decades ago, we were encouraged to be more aggressive about treating pain, often without enough training and support to do so safely. This coincided with heavy marketing of opioids to doctors. Many of us were even taught – incorrectly – that opioids are not addictive when prescribed for legitimate pain.”

It is worth noting that the current Surgeon General Jerome Adams has been personally impacted by the opioid crisis. His brother is one of the many victims.

The Bottom Line

The learned intermediary was not “learned” in the past, doctors were misinformed or incorrectly “learned.” Defendants would face great challenges in succeeding in arguments sounding in the Learned Intermediary Doctrine given all that is now known.

New Black Box Warnings

In June of 2018, the FDA required new Black Box Warnings be added to the prescribing labels of all instant release opioid products partially because prescribers were miseducated by the opioid defendants, their front groups and key opinion leaders.

New Black Box Warning requirements were imposed on all opioid instant release products, as of June 2018. The intent was to ensure that previously miseducated doctors (learned intermediaries) gain an understanding of current proper opioid prescribing standards and cease prescribing opioids based on the past misinformation (incorrect learning) they received over the past several decades.

Mass Tort Nexus invites you to attend our July 20-22 Opioid Crisis Summit and hopes that your firm will join the fight on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of individual opioid victims needing legal representation.

Opioid litigation in New York and other state courts, where hundreds of counties and cities have filed lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors, are now moving forward even with the explosion in the Federal Opiate Litigation MDL 2804 OPIOID-CRISIS-BRIEFCASE -MDL-2804-OPIATE-PRESCRIPTION-LITIGATION, where more than 500 states, counties, cities as well as unions, hospitals and individuals have filed lawsuits against the opioid industry as a whole.

At one point, the opiate industry attempted to raise arguments stating that the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t yet determined whether narcotic painkillers are unnecessarily dangerous – a central question in any litigation, which was quickly denied and seems to show that Opiate Big Pharma is once again attempting to hide behind the FDA shield.

In a two-page order issued in March by Judge Jerry Garguilo of the Suffolk County Supreme Court, New York where he ruled that there is “no compelling reason to impose a stay of proceedings” until the FDA completes its own review of the benefits and risks of opioids. The lawsuits by most of the counties in New York, which have been consolidated in Garguilo’s court, are “backward-looking” toward allegedly fraudulent marketing materials and tactics the drug companies used to convince doctors and patients their products had low risk of addiction.

Oklahoma, one of at least 20 states besides New York that have opioid lawsuit dockets against drugmakers, alleges fraudulent marketing of drugs that fueled the opioid epidemic in the lawsuit filed in June 2017, and seeks unspecified damages from Purdue Pharma, Allergan, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceuticals and several of their subsidiaries.

The New York state court lawsuits are joined by another somewhat unique group of plaintiffs in the legal battle over the opioid-epidemic with class actions filed by consumers who claim they’re seeing skyrocketing health insurance costs as a result of the crisis.

The suits, filed in New York and four other states, were brought by individual persons against opioid manufacturers and distributors, and are among the few class actions filed against drug makers and marketers. The vast majority of cases have been separate actions brought by government entities like cities and counties.

The proposed classes include businesses and individuals who paid for health insurance as part of employer-sponsored plans.

“We don’t know anyone who in the litigation is addressing the private sector harms to consumers and businesses from increased premiums and other insurance costs that flow to anyone in the health insurance market as a result of the fact that insurers are paying more for addictions,” said Travis Lenkner, one of the plaintiffs attorneys filing the cases.

The opioid cases add a new type of plaintiff into the wide-reaching opioid litigation, which have also includes states, Native American tribes, pension funds and hospitals.

John Parker, senior vice president of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, speaking on behalf of distributors AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp., all named as defendants, called the opioid epidemic a “complex public health challenge.”

“Given our role, the idea that distributors are responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and is regulated,” he said in a statement. “Those bringing lawsuits would be better served addressing the root causes, rather than trying to redirect blame through litigation.”

Purdue Pharma spokesman Bob Josephson noted that his company’s products account for less than 2 percent of all opioid prescriptions. Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals defended the labels on its prescription opioids and called the allegations “baseless and unsubstantiated.”

Representatives of the other manufacturing defendants, which include Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Insys Therapeutics Inc., did not respond to requests for comment.

It is now fairly common knowledge in the legal world that there is more than enough data that links increased health insurance costs to the opioid epidemic as well as the overall catastrophic impact of the flood of opioids into the America marketplace.

The suits cite statistics. In California, for instance, health insurance premiums for family coverage increased 233.5 percent from 2002 to 2016. Monthly premiums for the plaintiff in that case, Jordan Chu, jumped from $160.52 in 2016 to $240.76 this year. New Jersey residents with private health insurance spent $5,081 in insurance premiums in 2014, up from $2,454 in 2001. And an average family plan in New York with annual costs of $9,439 in 2003 had jumped to $19,375 in 2016.

Plaintiff counsel stated that they will be filing suits in more states and fight any attempts to transfer these cases to the Northern District of Ohio, where U.S. District Judge Dan Polster is overseeing the opioid multidistrict litigation, MDL 2804, even though the cases were filed in federal courts. A damaging discovery win for the plaintiffs was the order of May 18, 2018, see DEA ARCOS Database Access Order May 8, 2018 MDL 2804, where Judge Polster ordered the DEA to turn over distribution data for all 50 states based on the revelations in a prior DEA related order where the Opioid Drug distribution data provided very solid information on all the parties involved in creating the opioid crisis over the last 15 years.

The New York court docket parallels the federal and many other opioid based complaints, filed in state courts across the country where parties have decided to pursue their claims in their state courts versus the federal docket. These filings in both state and federal courts, will only increases the pressure on manufacturers and wholesalers to either win dismissal of these cases or prepare for an accelerated trial schedule.

There are currently more than 500 of the nation’s 3,200 counties have sued and plaintiff lawyers hope to soon get that number to 1,500, which some lawyers consider critical mass for a settlement.

The defendant companies argue they can’t be held liable for selling a legal product sold only with a doctor’s prescription whose distribution was controlled and overseen, from manufacturing to retail sales, by federal and state regulators.

The plaintiffs argue manufacturers used a variety of tactics, including misleading marketing materials and highly paid physician-influencers, to convince prescribing physicians their products were safe for treating chronic pain when, in fact, they were highly addictive.

In the March order, Judge Garguilo rejected the defendants’ claim that the FDA has exclusive authority to determine whether, in effect, opioids should be sold for anything other than relieving the pain of terminal illness. Regardless of what the FDA determines, the judge said, the municipal plaintiffs have the right to seek redress for their costs associated with addiction.

“Because the focus of this lawsuit is on the state of scientific knowledge that existed when the defendants made their marketing claims, there is no risk of inconsistent rulings, and none of the current studies will have any bearing on whether the defendants’ representations were misleading when made,” the judge wrote. The court isn’t being asked to decide the risks and benefits of opioids but whether the defendants misrepresented those risks and benefits, he added.

In case the defendants didn’t grasp the judge’s ultimate goal, the judge restated his “previously expressed desire” for a “prompt resolution of this matter.” The federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation in Ohio, Judge Dan Aaron Polster, has similarly urged defendants to engage in settlement talks, although a global resolution of the litigation could prove difficult to negotiate.

In addition to hundreds of cases consolidated in federal court, the defendants face a wave of litigation in state court, like the New York cases, as well as lawsuits and investigations by state attorneys general and the federal government. Any settlement would have to protect the defendant companies from future lawsuits over the same issue and that may be difficult to negotiate given all the concurrent litigation in different courts. The time has now arrived for Opioid Big Pharma, in all forms to face the facts that for close to 20 years they have flooded the mainstream commerce of America with massive amounts of opiates with little to no oversight, which whether caused by a catastrophic systemic failure on many levels, or simple greed, the time has now come for the opiate industry to face the music of complex litigation in state and federal court venues across the country.

For those looking to tap into the opioid litigation or learn what the current status is in both state and federal court opioid litigation, please visit www.opioidcrisissummit.com where Mass Tort Nexus is hosting national political leaders and lead opiate counsel who are active in the day to day opioid crisis and have the most up to date case information during the two day event taking place July 21-22, 2018 in Fort Lauderdale.

How Insys Theraputics, Inc. Sold Stock And Killed Americans At The Same Time

The Opioid Crisis Behind The Scenes

by Mark A. York (June 8, 2018)

Subsys – an Insys Therapeutics, Inc. Pharmaceutical Opioid Product

(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA) Here’s a perfect example of how corporate greed and licensed medical providers helped create the now rampant US opioid crisis– how payments to doctors and prescribers across the country caused addictive painkillers, like “Subsys” a fentanyl based opioid, to suddenly rip through our country like a flash fire.

Insys Therapeutics,a publicly traded pharmaceutical company based in Arizona, is just one small example of what Big Pharma has been doing for the last 10 years in every city and state in the United States, often increasing corporate earnings right alongside the catastrophic opioid related death rates. For Insys Theraputics executives, the sales team and its nationwide cadre of fraudulent doctors, the results have been felony indictments and long federal prison sentences, with many more to come.

INSYS EXECUTIVES INDICTED

December 2016 saw Insys Therapeutics CEO Michael Babich and five other senior executives indicted on criminal charges for paying kickbacks and bribes to medical professionals and committing fraud against insurance companies across the country for offering a highly addictive Fentanyl prescription product “Subsys” to the masses. The Insys boardroom was indicted in the US District Court of Massachusetts, where the entire team has engaged a stable of top national law firms to defend the indictments. The “Subsys” sales teams were charged in federal indictments across the country, including Arkansas, Connecticut, Alaska and New York and the indictments will only increase as those cases proceed and “cooperating witnesses” decide that prison isn’t an option.

To compound further harsh scrutiny for Insys, it’s new CEO Saeed Motahari, moved over from Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the Oxycontin maker, who’s also a major target of criminal and civil investigations across the country by local state and federal agencies. Purdue is charged with false marketing, off-label use and ignoring the Oxycontin highly addictive dangers for years, while bringing in literally billions of dollars in profits, but Purdue’s transgressions are in Part 2 of our ongoing reports on big pharma and opioid abuses.

DOCTORS FACING NUMEROUS CHARGES

Doctors and their pain clinics, medical centers and other healthcare facilities have been indicted for fraudulent prescription writing, submitting false claims to insurance companies and numerous other federal charges and all face a minimum of 20 to 50 years in federal prison. Two of the busiest “Subsys” prescription writers in the country were Alabama doctors, John Couch and Xiulu Ruan, who earned over $40 million from Insys, and were charged with running a pill mill between 2013 and 2015, have been convicted and sentenced to 20 years each in federal prison. The top “Subsys: prescriber of all, Dr. Gavin Awerbach, of Saginaw, MI pled guilty to defrauding Medicare and Blue Cross out of $3.1 million in improper Subsys prescriptions, his criminal sentence is pending. To show the far reach of Insys and it’s corporate plans to saturate the US market with opioids, in Anchorage, Alaska Dr. Mahmood Ahmad, was charged with heading a massive Subsys prescribing operation, which he denies, but immediately surrendered his Alaska medical license which the caused the revocation of his medical license in Arkansas.

INSURANCE COMPANIES FILED SUIT

Adding weight to this tragedy is Anthem Insurance — you may recognize them as Blue Cross, one of the largest insurers in the country, now setting their sights on Insys Theraputics and it’s executives.

Anthem is suing Insys Therapeutics, the maker of the powerful opioid Subsys, for allegedly lying, cheating and defrauding its way into the medicine cabinets of Anthem clients across the country. The drug according to Anthem’s complaint, was off market prescribed to thousands of patients for years. Review shows that 54% of patients who are taking Subsys don’t really have cancer — one of the requirements for prescribing the drug, Subsys was FDA approved for “treatment of pain related to cancer” and any other use is unauthorized or off-label use.

Anthem says that’s because Insys devised an elaborate scheme to get around Anthem’s system — by falsifying records and posing as medical professionals, often with the complete knowledge and cooperation of medical doctors across the country who then received thousands of dollars in kickbacks. These doctors chose to exchange high fees from Insys in exchange for writing off-label prescriptions to patients seeking pain relief for non-life threatening conditions.

Anthem claims it ultimately paid $19 million more for Subsys than it should have. “But the harm inflicted by Insys’s conduct is not merely financial in nature,” the complaint states “Insys put Anthem’s members’ health at risk.”

THE OFF LABEL CAMPAIGN

The only people who are supposed to be taking Subsys are adult cancer patients, according to the FDA “Subsys” approval files, anything other than that is an “off label” indication. Now you can take a drug to treat something off label if you want to, but you have to get your doctor to get pass a prior authorization.

Anthem alleges that Insys has an entire unit to get around this requirement — it’s titled the “reimbursement unit.” Investigative journalists exposed this fraud initially as far back as 2015 on behalf of the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, see Insys Therapeutics “Subsys” Off Label Rx Fraud.

The Reimbursement Unit claim was basically the company’s fraudulent prescription approval factory, which helped participating doctors process claims (the doctors had so many they couldn’t handle them all). The unit falsified records to show patients had cancer and called insurers, pretending to be patients or other medical professionals, to facilitate approval of payment for off-label treatment.

This is the Unit’s script for obtaining off-label approval (taken from the Anthem suit):

The script read: “The physician is aware that the medication is intended for the management of breakthrough pain in cancer patients. The physician is treating the patient for their pain (or breakthrough pain, whichever is applicable).” The script deliberately omitted the word “cancer as applied to the patient treatment under discussion.”

DO STOCKS RISE AND FALL ON INDICTMENTS

In late 2016 the entire top level of Insys executives, including former CEO Michael Babich, and five others were indicted and charged with multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy. Since then a number of sales reps and medical practitioners have pled guilty to charges that they gave or accepted kickbacks in furtherance of the fraudulent prescription scheme. The manager of reimbursement services, Elizabeth Gurrieri, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in June. There have been numerous deaths and related overdoses attributed to the over prescribing of Subsys across the country, which to date, show most parties involved being able to avoid the scrutiny of criminal charges related to off-label marketing and prescribing. Insys has tried to re-shuffle the executive board by bringing in new members, but business as usual in the Big Pharma boardroom goes on, as they simply brought in other more experienced “opioid industry” insiders to help further the continued use of “Subsys” and purportedly the major Insys New Pharma” entry, a line of complex medical marijuana products, that may enable them to shake off the current Insys label as the United States leading “opioid abuse by boardroom design” corporation.

As part of the boardroom strategy to get doctors to prescribe Subsys, Insys spent millions paying them off through a fraudulent “speakers program” meant to educate medical professionals about the drug. The speaking engagements were a veiled attempt to cover-up the direct payment to doctors for writing prescriptions, the more prescriptions you wrote, the higher your “speaking fees” increased. There are e-mails, texts and other Insys communications from all levels of company personnel stating “if they not writing prescription, they’re off the speaking program”, this policy resulted in one Alabama sales rep being paid over $700 thousand in Subsys based Rx commissions for one year, while her base salary was $40 thousand.

“While the exact amount of those kickbacks has yet to be determined, criminal indictments of the recipients indicate that Insys paid “speaker fees” of millions, of dollars, which may result in additional criminal charges against the doctors as well as the doctors facility staff who often worked hand in hand with Insys staff.

SALES REP NATALIE REED PERHAC

In the plea, Perhacs admitted that she was hired to be the personal sales representative for one of Insys’s most important prescribers, Dr. Xiulu Ruan. Ruan is one of two Alabama doctors who picked up over $115,000 in speaker fees from 2012 to 2015, and earned in excess of $40 million in related medical earnings during the same period. Earlier this year they were sentenced to 20 years in jail each for running a “pill mill” and helping Insys sales rep Natalie Reed Perhacs sell Subsys, for which she was paid in excess of $700 thousand in commissions, see Perhac Guilty Plea in Alabama Federal Court.

Perhac Plea Excerpts:

Admision No. 78: . Perhacs admitted that her primary responsibility at Insys was to increase the volume of Subsys® prescribed by Dr. Ruan, and his partner Dr. John Patrick Couch. This… was accomplished by (1) handling prior authorizations for their patients who had been prescribed Subsys®; (2) identifying patients who had been at the same strength of Subsys® for several months and recommending that Dr. Ruan or Dr. Couch increase the patients’ prescription strength; and (3) setting up and attending paid speaker programs.

Admission No. 79:. Ms. Perhac admitted that because of her involvement in the prior authorization process, she knew that the vast majority of Dr. Ruan and Dr. Couch’s patients did not have breakthrough cancer pain.

As you can see by the Perhac admissions, numbers 78 and 79, which reflect the vast number of charges lodged against her, the federal government is cracking down on everyone involved with the “Subsys” fraud. According to confidential sources, the recent June 2017 FDA “Opioid Crisis” Conference and related strategic review of the opioid crisis, will result in many more indictments and charges against drug makers and the medical providers who’ve helped facilitate the opioid epidemic that is currently in place across the United States.

To summarize the view in Oklahoma and other states who are pursuing the Opioid prescription drugmakers in courts all across the country, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter stated in his filings “Defendants created the worst public health crisis in modern history. Families destroyed,”adding “Children killed. Babies addicted. Morgues overflowing. Prisons full.” This is a common view across the entire United States at this point.

Oklahoma, one of at least 13 states that have filed lawsuits against drugmakers, alleges fraudulent marketing of drugs that fueled the opioid epidemic in the lawsuit filed in June 2017, and seeks unspecified damages from Purdue Pharma, Allergan, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceuticals and several of their subsidiaries.

“We appreciate the urgency Judge (Thad) Balkman saw in getting the case to trial,” Attorney General Mike Hunter said. “Oklahomans who have suffered immeasurably from the years of fraudulent marketing campaigns will see this case resolved sooner rather than later.” Hunter said Balkman scheduled the trial to begin May 28, 2019.

Within the last 2 weeks, state attorneys general of Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee lawsuits have now joined many other states who have filed lawsuits asserting that Purdue Pharma violated state consumer protection laws by falsely denying or downplaying the addiction risk while overstating the benefits of opioids. The lawsuits also names pharmaceutical manufacturers Endo Pharmaceuticals, Allergan, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Mallinckrodt, as well as drug distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corporation.

“It’s time the defendants pay for the pain and the destruction they’ve caused,” Florida State Attorney General Pam Bondi told a press conference.

Medical professionals say a shift in the 1990s to “institutionalize” pain management opened the doors for pharmaceutical companies to encourage doctors to massively increase painkiller prescriptions, and Purdue Pharma led that effort. Which is now directly linked to the massive increase in drug overdoses, now see as the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, killing more than 64,000 people in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

OxyContin was launched in the mid-90s by Purdue Pharma and aggressively marketed as a safe way to treat chronic pain. But it created dependency in many even as prescribed, and the pills were easy to abuse. Mass overprescribing has led to an addiction and overdose catastrophe across the US, more recently rippling out into rising heroin and fentanyl deaths.

Opioid overdoses made up a staggering 66 percent of all drug overdose deaths in 2016, surpassing the annual number of lives lost to breast cancer.

Florida and the other states also, named drug makers Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc., Allergan, units of Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, and Mallinckrodt, as well as drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. The distributors played a part in opioid abuse through oversupply, including failing to identify suspicious orders and report them to authorities, including the DEA and other oversight agencies, contributing to an illegal secondary market in prescription opioids, such as Purdue’s OxyContin, Endo’s Percocet and Insys Therapeutics fentanyl drug Subsys, a fast acting and extremely addictive drug.

The companies deny wrongdoing and say they complied with Federal Drug Administration requirements that include warning labels showing potential risks that come with using their drugs. “We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and are dedicated to being part of the solution,” Purdue Pharma said in a statement Friday. “We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.”

Ohio Filed First

In announcing his office’s lawsuit in May 2017, Ohio Attorney General DeWine said the drug companies helped unleash the crisis by spending millions of dollars marketing and promoting such drugs as Purdue’s OxyContin, without consideration of the long term effects of the related addiction, which Purdue was absolutely aware of throughout the years of profits that now total billions of dollars.

The lawsuit said the drug companies disseminated misleading statements about the risks and benefits of opioids as part of a marketing scheme aimed at persuading doctors and patients that drugs should be used for chronic rather than short-term pain. Pain centers and medical practices across the country started writing an ever increasing number of high dose opioid prescriptions for what would be considered low to mid-level pain treatment.

Similar lawsuits have been filed by local governments, including those in several California counties, as well as the cities of Chicago, Illinois and Dayton, Ohio, three Tennessee district attorneys, and nine New York counties have also filed individual suits.

It is unknown at this time, if all of the legal actions filed by governmental entities across the country will be consolidated into MDL 2804, which may be the most effective way to manage the soon to be massive number of legal claims against Big Pharma and their long term opiate profit centers. Municipalities across the country seeking to recoup the enormous financial losses brought on by the opioid crisis.

The state lawsuits are separate from pending lawsuits in Ohio by dozens of local governments, and lawsuits by Native American tribes in the Dakotas and Oklahoma.

In South Dakota, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate filed a federal lawsuit in January against 24 opioid industry groups. See https://www.indianz.com/News/2018/04/11/navajonationopioid.pdf. n Oklahoma, a federal judge has ruled that another similar lawsuit by the Cherokee Nation cannot be tried in tribal court, and Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree told the Tulsa World that the tribe will re-file the lawsuit in state court.

Lawsuits have already been filed by 16 other U.S. states and Puerto Rico against Purdue and the related opioid drug companies and distributors. Purdue, which is a privately held company, owned by the Sackler brothers and family, in February said it stopped promoting opioids to physicians after widespread criticism of the ways drugmakers market highly addictive painkillers.

Purdue Pharma is owned by the Sackler family, listed at 19th on the annual Forbes list of wealthiest families in the country at a worth of $13 billion. The family’s fortune largely comes from OxyContin sales, which its company branded and introduced as an extended release painkiller in 1995.

Two branches of the Sackler family control Purdue, which developed and continues to make OxyContin, the narcotic prescription painkiller regarded as the “ground zero” of America’s opioids crisis.

Bondi said state attorneys general from New York, California and Massachusetts were preparing similar lawsuits, with Massachusetts last week sending a letter to Purdue notifying the company of its intention to sue. The California and New York attorney general offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue, in a statement, denied the accusations, saying its drugs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and accounted for only 2 percent of all opioid prescriptions, seemingly ignoring the 600 lawsuits filed against them in the last year, as well as the minimum of 15 federal and state criminal investigations that are underway across the country. At the forefront of the criminal investigations is the U.S. Attorney, John H. Durham, District of Connecticut, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, based in New Haven, CT the state which is also where Purdue Pharma is headquartered, who is leading a multi-group task force looking into the potential criminal conduct of not only Purdue, but the entire Opiate Big Pharma industry as a whole.

“We are disappointed that after months of good faith negotiations working toward a meaningful resolution to help these states address the opioid crisis, this group of attorneys general have unilaterally decided to pursue a costly and protracted litigation process,” Purdue said.

Opioids were involved in more than 42,000 overdose deaths in 2016, the last year for which data was available, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kentucky, one of the nation’s hardest-hit states, lost more than 1,400 people to drug overdoses that year.

Separate litigation involving at least 433 lawsuits by U.S. cities and counties were consolidated in a federal court in Cleveland, Ohio. The defendants include Purdue, J&J, Teva, Endo, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. The federal litigation is growing daily see, Opiate Prescription MDL 2804, US District Court of Ohio link.

The federal lawsuits which accuse drugmakers and the opioid industry as a whole, of deceptively marketing opioids and the distributors of ignoring indications that the painkillers were being diverted for improper uses.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who is overseeing the consolidated litigation, has been pushing for a global settlement. He had previously invited state attorneys general with cases not before him to participate in those talks, from the start of the MDL 2804 litigation being assigned to his courtroom.

Despite filing separate lawsuits, the six attorneys general on Tuesday said they would continue to engage in settlement discussions with Purdue and other companies. “You always want to settle and prevent a prolonged litigation,” said Florida’s Bondi. “But we’re sending a message that we’re fully prepared to go to war.”

Will litigation in most every state in the union paired with the National Opiate Prescription MDL 2804 reign in the Opioid industry that’s earned billions and billions of dollars over the last 20 years, all at the expense of the people of the United States and their families? If history is a gauge of how things will end up, chances are a big “NO” as money and greed at the corporate levels have traditionally overruled anything affiliated with long term public health concerns in our for-profit healthcare system currently entrenched in the United States.

(Mass Tort Nexus Media) Litigation against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and the rest of the Opioid Big Pharma industry just jumped significantly, as six more states have filed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, et al. The ongoing allegations against the opioid pharmaceutical industry as a whole, where numerous governmental entities from across the country have asserted that the opiate makers have fueled a national opioid crisis. This is primarily based on corporate boardroom designed deceptive opioid marketing campaigns, designed to sell prescription opioids, and minimize the previously well-known medical risks, including addiction and overdose, while generating billions of dollars in sales.

Texas saw 1,186 opioid-related deaths in 2015, while the nation as a whole had 33,000 such deaths that year. Researchers have flagged opioids as one possible factor in Texas’ staggering rise in women’s deaths during and shortly after pregnancy.

State attorneys general of Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee assert that Purdue Pharma violated state consumer protection laws by falsely denying or downplaying the addiction risk while overstating the benefits of opioids. The lawsuits also names pharmaceutical manufacturers Endo Pharmaceuticals, Allergan, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Mallinckrodt, as well as drug distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corporation.

“It’s time the defendants pay for the pain and the destruction they’ve caused,” Florida State Attorney General Pam Bondi told a press conference.

Medical professionals say a shift in the 1990s to “institutionalize” pain management opened the doors for pharmaceutical companies to encourage doctors to massively increase painkiller prescriptions, and Purdue Pharma led that effort. Which is now directly linked to the massive increase in drug overdoses, now see as the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, killing more than 64,000 people in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

OxyContin was launched in the mid-90s by Purdue Pharma and aggressively marketed as a safe way to treat chronic pain. But it created dependency in many even as prescribed, and the pills were easy to abuse. Mass overprescribing has led to an addiction and overdose catastrophe across the US, more recently rippling out into rising heroin and fentanyl deaths.

Opioid overdoses made up a staggering 66 percent of all drug overdose deaths in 2016, surpassing the annual number of lives lost to breast cancer.

Florida and the other states also, named drug makers Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc., Allergan, units of Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, and Mallinckrodt, as well as drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. The distributors played a part in opioid abuse through oversupply, including failing to identify suspicious orders and report them to authorities, including the DEA and other oversight agencies, contributing to an illegal secondary market in prescription opioids, such as Purdue’s OxyContin, Endo’s Percocet and Insys Therapeutics fentanyl drug Subsys, a fast acting and extremely addictive drug.

Teva, in a statement, emphasized the importance of safely using opioids, while AmerisourceBergen said it was committed to collaborating with all stakeholders to combat opioid abuse.

The Healthcare Distribution Alliance, an umbrella group for drug distributors, said in a statement that accusations that distributors were responsible for the abuse of opioid prescriptions defied common sense and lacked understanding of the pharmaceutical supply chain.

BILLIONS IN PROFITS

The pharmaceutical industry spent a vast $6.4 billion in “direct-to-consumer” advertisements to hype new drugs in 2016, according tracking firm Kantar Media. That figure has gone up by 62% since 2012, Kantar Media says. This number may seem large at first but compared to the multi-billions in yearly profits just by opioid manufacturers over the last 15 years, the numbers is small. Corporate earnings have risen every year since the push to increase opioid prescriptions in every way possible, to became an accepted business model in Big Pharma boardrooms across the country.

THE SACKLERS AND PURDUE

Lawsuits have already been filed by 16 other U.S. states and Puerto Rico against Purdue and the related opioid drug companies and distributors. Purdue, which is a privately held company, owned by the Sackler brothers and family, in February said it stopped promoting opioids to physicians after widespread criticism of the ways drugmakers market highly addictive painkillers.

Purdue Pharma is owned by the Sackler family, listed at 19th on the annual Forbes list of wealthiest families in the country at a worth of $13 billion. The family’s fortune largely comes from OxyContin sales, which its company branded and introduced as an extended release painkiller in 1995.

Two branches of the Sackler family control Purdue, which developed and continues to make OxyContin, the narcotic prescription painkiller regarded as the “ground zero” of America’s opioids crisis.

Bondi said state attorneys general from New York, California and Massachusetts were preparing similar lawsuits, with Massachusetts last week sending a letter to Purdue notifying the company of its intention to sue. The California and New York attorney general offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue, in a statement, denied the accusations, saying its drugs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and accounted for only 2 percent of all opioid prescriptions, seemingly ignoring the 600 lawsuits filed against them in the last year, as well as the minimum of 15 federal and state criminal investigations that are underway across the country. At the forefront of the criminal investigations is the U.S. Attorney, John H. Durham, District of Connecticut, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, based in New Haven, CT the state which is also where Purdue Pharma is headquartered, who is leading a multi-group task force looking into the potential criminal conduct of not only Purdue, but the entire Opiate Big Pharma industry as a whole.

“We are disappointed that after months of good faith negotiations working toward a meaningful resolution to help these states address the opioid crisis, this group of attorneys general have unilaterally decided to pursue a costly and protracted litigation process,” Purdue said.

Opioids were involved in more than 42,000 overdose deaths in 2016, the last year for which data was available, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kentucky, one of the nation’s hardest-hit states, lost more than 1,400 people to drug overdoses that year.

Separate litigation involving at least 433 lawsuits by U.S. cities and counties were consolidated in a federal court in Cleveland, Ohio. The defendants include Purdue, J&J, Teva, Endo, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. The federal litigation is growing daily see, Opiate Prescription MDL 2804, US District Court of Ohio link.

The federal lawsuits which accuse drugmakers and the opioid industry as a whole, of deceptively marketing opioids and the distributors of ignoring indications that the painkillers were being diverted for improper uses.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who is overseeing the consolidated litigation, has been pushing for a global settlement. He had previously invited state attorneys general with cases not before him to participate in those talks, from the start of the MDL 2804 litigation being assigned to his courtroom.

Despite filing separate lawsuits, the six attorneys general on Tuesday said they would continue to engage in settlement discussions with Purdue and other companies. “You always want to settle and prevent a prolonged litigation,” said Florida’s Bondi. “But we’re sending a message that we’re fully prepared to go to war.”

PURDUE-OXYCONTIN HISTORY

On December 12, 1995, the Food and Drug Administration approved the opioid analgesic OxyContin. It hit the market in 1996. In its first year, OxyContin accounted for $45 million in sales for its manufacturer, Stamford, Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. By 2000 that number would balloon to $1.1 billion, an increase of well over 2,000 percent in a span of just four years. Ten years later, the profits would inflate still further, to $3.1 billion. By then the potent opioid accounted for about 30 percent of the painkiller market. What’s more, Purdue Pharma’s patent for the original OxyContin formula didn’t expire until 2013. This meant that a single private, family-owned pharmaceutical company with non-descript headquarters in the Northeast controlled nearly a third of the entire United States market for pain pills.

OxyContin’s ball-of-lightning emergence in the health care marketplace was close to unprecedented for a new painkiller in an age where synthetic opiates like Vicodin, Percocet, and Fentanyl had already been competing for decades in doctors’ offices and pharmacies for their piece of the market share of pain-relieving drugs. In retrospect, it almost didn’t make sense. Why was OxyContin so much more popular? Had it been approved for a wider range of ailments than its opioid cousins? Did doctors prefer prescribing it to their patients?

During its rise in popularity, there was a suspicious undercurrent to the drug’s spectrum of approved uses and Purdue Pharma’s relationship to the physicians that were suddenly privileging OxyContin over other meds to combat everything from back pain to arthritis to post-operative discomfort. It would take years to discover that there was much more to the story than the benign introduction of a new, highly effective painkiller.

US DEPT OF JUSTICE INDICTMENTS

While the FDA has failed, the US Department of Justice has launched a massive crackdown on opiate drug makers including indictments of company executives, sales & marketing personnel as well as the doctors and pharmacies that have enabled the flood of easy access narcotics into the US market for over 15 years. The question is “how and why” did the FDA drop the ball or was this an intentional lack of enforcement and oversight by the FDA and other agencies due to Big Pharma influence over Congressional members who would blunt any true oversight of drug companies.

“FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON SPEAKS TO THE OPIATE CRISIS ISSUES”

Former President Bill Clinton pulled no punches as he focused directly on the opiate issues “Nobody gets out of this for free,” which seems to be where most of the finger pointing and blame game rests, which is one of the prime issues of the highest importance. The checkbook to pull the country out of this national opiate epidemic will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars and even then, the costs of social and economic damage to date, will never be recovered. Clinton further commented on how the opioid epidemic “creeps into every nook and cranny of our country” and needs to be addressed as both a huge national problem and a community-by-community tragedy, adding “this can rob our country of the future.”

RURAL vs. BIG CITY OPIATES

Almost 2.75 million opioid prescriptions were filled in New York City each year from 2014 to 2016. Which is a very high number for a major city, but not nearly the millions of opiate prescriptions written in the more rural regions of Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, where the number of opiates prescribed equaled 100 plus pills per month for every resident in these states, with West Virginia numbers being, 780 million painkillers prescribed in six years.

As more and more cities, states and counties files suits against the opiate drug industry as a whole, there will be a point where Opiate Big Pharm will have to decide whether to admit it’s fault in the opioid crisis, or simply continue to evade responsibility and leave the process up to lawyers and the courts to assign a financial penalty for the alleged corporate opioid abuses.

FDA Failed to Cite Opioid Big Pharma

Perhaps a look at former US Representative Tom Price, will provide insight into how our lawmakers work within the healthcare industry. Rep. Price was appointed by President Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which the FDA reports to, was forced to resign as HHS head due to various transgression within 6 months of being appointed, as well as leaks that while a sitting congressman he enacted a bill favoring a medical device makers extension of a multi-year government contract. Not only did Price enact the bill, he purchased stock in the company prior to the bill introduction and secured a massive profit on the stock price increase after the contract extension was announced. In normal business circles this is considered “insider trading” and is illegal, but when you’re one of those people in charge of creating the rules and regulations, there’s an apparent “get out of jail card” that comes with your congressional seat.

As long as the US Congress fails to correct the lack of oversight by the FDA and other regulatory agencies into what and how dangerous drugs and products are placed into the US marketplace, there will always be bad drugs entering the healthcare pipeline in the United States, with the now enduring default misnomer of “Profits Before Patients” firmly in place in boardrooms and within our government.

As the Opioid litigation expands across the country in both state and federal courtrooms, it remains to be seen if the anticipated payouts will surpass the $200 billion payday for governments in the 1998 Big Tobacco Litigation settlement.

What remains to be seen is where and how the directly affected “individuals” who were prescribed millions of addictive opiates and subsequently became addicted and where thousands more overdosed and died, remains to be seen.

Who will be the advocate to make sure that these individuals as well as their children, families and communities as a whole are placed on the road to recovery. Historically, Big Pharma is not an industry to put the best interests of the paying consumer at the forefront of their agendas.

Will this be a long hot summer of trials for Xarelto defense counsel?

(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA) The second Xarelto bellwether drug trial over dangers related to internal bleeding linked to the anticoagulant blockbuster drug, started Friday April 6, 2018 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, in front of Judge Michael E. Erdos. This trial, where plaintiff Daniel Russell, of New Jersey claims that after being prescribed Xarelto, for Atrial Fibrillation or Afib, the drug caused massive internal bleeding and other serious medical complications. Mr. Russel’s trial follows the December 2017 verdict where a jury had awarded plaintiff Lynn Hartman $28 million for failure to warn of the dangers of Xarelto, a verdict later reversed in post trial arguments by Judge Erdos.

In opening statements by lead counsel Brian Barr of the Levin Papantonio firm,(see Russell v Bayer et al Trial Transcript Opening Statements April 6, 2018) the jury was told on Friday, that drug makers Bayer AG and Johnson & Johnson units (Janssen Pharmaceuticals, et al) failed to warn doctors about the risk the medication posed when used in combination with other drugs, which include internal bleeding, ischemic strokes and other adverse events. Offering that the companies had known that combining Xarelto with antiplatelet medications including Plavix and even aspirin, the combination would significantly increase the risk of internal bleeding, but that they ultimately opted to keep the information to themselves, and would not offer a formal FDA approved warning.

In the initial Phila bellwether trial, Lynn Hartman and her husband had filed their complaint against the drugmakers in 2015, (see XARELTO Case No. 2349 Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas briefcase) with claims very similar to Mr. Russell, resulting in the jury awarding $1.8 million in compensatory damages and $26 million in punitive damages. This verdict was seen as a high note for plaintiff counsel in the Xarelto litigation, after three prior trial losses, in the Xarelto MDL 2592 bellwether trials in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2017, which took place in federal courts.

The Phila Court Xarelto docket is the hot mass tort ticket now as Judge Fallon decided there will be no more MDL trials in front of him, and started the remand process in the Xarelto MDL 2592 cases, where he’s sending the cases back to original jurisdictions for trial.

The Lynn Hartman trial was just one of about 21,400 lawsuits against Bayer and Janssen pending in federal and state courts blaming injuries on Xarelto, and was the first case selected for trial from more than 1,400 Xarelto cases pending in the Complex Litigation docket of the Philadelphia court. Daniel Russel’s case is the second bellwether trial to go forward in the Xarelto docket, with several additional trials set to follow in the coming months.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Xarelto in 2011, to be prescribed for people with atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disorder, and to treat and reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms, often after implant surgeries.

Plaintiffs in the Hartman trial as well as in thousands of other Xarelto lawsuits, alleged that the drug was unreasonably dangerous and that Janssen (J&J) and Bayer failed to warn patients about a serious risk of uncontrollable, irreversible bleeding in emergencies and were aware of adverse events for a long period of time. These allegations will be argued aggressively by defense in all forthcoming trials, as the defendants do not seem to be willing to bend on their winning trial strategy.

Bayer and Janssen have defended Xarelto’s label stating that the label adequately warns of bleeding risks. After four trials verdicts, all in their favor, defense seems to be using an effective trial strategy that has worked in venues across the country.

The three bellwether trials in the Xarelto MDL 2592, Xarelto MDL 2592 Briefcase (US District Court ED Louisiana) heard in front of Judge Eldon Fallon, all resulted in defense wins for Bayer and Janssen, with this Philadelphia trial shifting the focus from the federal Xarelto docket to the Philadelphia court and the bellwether trials scheduled there. This trail will be closely watched by all arties, as the impact of the initial plaintiff’s trial win followed by the Judge Erdos reversal in January during post-trial hearings, was not anticipated by those on the plaintiff bench. Will the Hartman verdict reversal ruling, as well as the peripheral trial conduct issues that were also addressed post-trial by Judge Erdos have any impact on this current Russell trial and the remaining scheduled trials in the Phila Xarelto docket? That is a question that remains to be seen over the course of the upcoming trials in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Xarelto docket

“A small West Virginia town of 3,000 people got 21 million pills”

By Mark A. York (February 26, 2016 )

Why West Virginia has the highest rate of overdose deaths in the country

(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA) Drug companies deluged tiny towns in West Virginia with a monsoon of addictive and deadly opioid pills over the last decade, according to ongoing investigations by various public and private entities. After Opioid Big Pharma has reaped billions in profits over the last 15 years at the expense of US citizens, often those in the most rural and distressed areas of the country, it now appears that the time has come for Big Pharma to be called to answer for its conduct.

For instance, drug companies collectively poured 20.8 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills into the small city of Williamson, West Virginia, between 2006 and 2016, according to a set of letters the committee released Tuesday. Williamson’s population was just 3,191 in 2010, according to US Census data. These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia,” committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said in a joint statement to the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

The nation is currently grappling with an epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that, on average, 115 Americans die each day from opioid overdoses. West Virginia currently has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the country. Hardest hit have been the regions of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucy where for some reason the opioid industry chose to focus on, the how and why will be address in the federal and state courts across the country, as the opioid crisis has caused the “Opiate Prescription Multidistrict Litigation MDL 2804” , to be created and heard in the US District Court-Northern District of Ohio, in front of Judge Dan Polster, see Opiate Prescription MDL 2804 Briefcase.

OPIOID BIG PHARMA INDUSTRY CONSPIRACY

Beside drug distributors, drug manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma and others bare responsibility for the flood of opioids to hard hit areas of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky and they are very familiar with the “opiate litigation dance” often paying hundreds of millions in fines without accepting real responsibility or pleading guilty to criminal charges. They often enter into consent decrees where they pay a huge fines and promise to monitor the bad conduct in the future. This is actually considered a “get out of jail free” card, a very expensive card but a free pass for Opioid Big Pharma, none the less.

Purdue isn’t new to court battles. In 2007, the infamous drug maker and three of its executives pled guilty in federal court and paid out $634.5 million in fines for purposefully misleading regulators, doctors, and patients about the addictiveness of their opioid painkiller. Around the same time, Purdue was also sued by several states, including Washington, over similar allegations. Purdue agreed to a $19.5 million multi-state settlement. And in 2015, Purdue settled a case with Kentucky, agreeing to pay $24 million.

As part of the state settlements, Purdue was supposed to set up monitoring programs to make sure that its opioid drug didn’t wind up in the wrong hands. It was supposed to watch out for shady pharmacies, unusually large orders, or suspiciously frequent orders. But on this front, Everett alleges that Purdue once again put profits over people.

In released letters that were addressed to two regional drug distributors, Ohio-based Miami-Luken and Illinois-based HD Smith, related to both companies having distributed eye-popping numbers of pills to small cities in the state. In the letter, the committee lays out distribution data it has collected and asks questions about the companies’ distribution practices, including why they increased distribution so sharply in some towns and why they didn’t flag suspicious orders.

But Miami-Luken and HD Smith are not the only distributors that have drawn the committee’s attention. The letters are just the latest in the committee’s ongoing probe into what’s referred to as pill dumping amid the opioid crisis. Last year, the committee sent similar letters to three other drug companies, asking about their drug distribution in the state, these included the largest opiate distributors in the country AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal health and McKesson Corp, with all three listed in the top 10 of Fortune 100’s corporate hierarchy.

Miami-Luken followed through by providing some data and requested files, according to the committee. But those new pieces of information “raise a number of additional questions,” according to the committee.

WV FLOODED WITH OPIOIDS

Combining data collected from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Miami-Luken, the House Energy and Commerce Committee dove into the situation in Williamson. Between 2006 and 2016, drug distributors collectively shipped 20.8 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to two pharmacies in the small city. Those pharmacies were located roughly four blocks apart from each other, the committee noted. Miami-Luken alone supplied 6.4 million of those pills to just one of the pharmacies between 2008 and 2015. And between 2008 and 2009, the company inexplicably increased the amount of pills it delivered by 350 percent. The committee pressed Miami-Luken to explain how a town of 3,191 people could require such massive supplies and why the increases didn’t raise alarms.

The letter also reveals that in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 406 people, the company delivered 6.3 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills between 2005 and 2011. For just the year of 2008, the numbers work out to Miami-Luken providing 5,624 opioid painkiller pills for every man, woman, and child in the town, the committee notes.

Likewise, Miami-Luken also delivered 4.4 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to the 1,394-person town of Oceana, West Virginia, between 2008 and 2015. And in Beckley, West Virginia, the company didn’t hesitate to fulfill a string of orders for tens of thousands of opioid doses placed by one pharmacy in the span of five days.

WHERE WAS THE OFFICIAL OVERSIGHT

The House committee repeatedly asked if the company thought these orders were appropriate and what limits—if any—it would set on such small towns. Miami-Luken would not respond to a request for comment. The committee had similar questions for HD Smith, who delivered 1.3 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to a pharmacy in Kermit—the 406-person town—in 2008.

“If these figures are accurate, HD Smith supplied this pharmacy with nearly five times the amount a rural pharmacy would be expected to receive,” the committee wrote. It noted that the owner of that Kermit pharmacy later spent time in federal prison for violations of the Controlled Substance Act. Still, the committee pressed the question of whether HD Smith thought its distribution practices were appropriate.

“We will continue to investigate these distributors’ shipments of large quantities of powerful opioids across West Virginia, including what seems to be a shocking lack of oversight over their distribution, all the while collecting record breaking profits and paying sale reps in the field enormous bonuses. This is the pattern that all Opioid Big Pharma has followed across the United states for the last 20 years, pay field sales rep many thousands of dollars on bonuses, to push opiates on doctors, hospitals and anyone else who can move drugs into the healthcare treatment assembly line.

OPIOID INDUSTRY HAS INFLUENCE

To show the far reaching tentacles of Opioid Big Pharma, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey was a former lobbyist for a trade group that represented Miami-Luken and other drug companies. In 2016, Morrisey ended several state lawsuits with drug companies, including one with Miami-Luken. The lawsuits, filed by the state’s former attorney general, Darrell McGraw, alleged that the companies flooded the state with opioid painkillers.

How this conduct would be viewed outside West Virginia would normally not have become an issue if Morrisey’s halt to the litigation would have been the end of the legal story. But fast forward to December 2018 and the official opening of the “Opiate Prescription MDL 2408”, where hundreds of counties, cities, states, hospitals and others impacted by the opioid crisis across the country, are now able to file lawsuits against all “Opioid Big Pharma” players. The defendants include drug makers, distributors, major pharmacies and others, there may a second long hard look at Patrick Morrisey’ conduct and reasoning for stopping prior legal action against the prescription opioid industry.

>Federal Judge Dan Polster has ordered the start of formal settlement talks as the way to begin the Opiate Rx MDL 2804, he’s entered a settlement gag order and strongly suggesting the parties move ahead in this area or he will be forced “let both sides loose on each other and the government via wide open discovery” including access to the FDA and DEA files. The fate of multidistrict litigation over the opioid crisis now rests heavily with 18 plaintiff and defense counsel who’ve been tasked with negotiating a settlement in the historic case. The negotiators, chosen earlier this month, are from two camps: seven attorneys representing local governments that assert grievous financial harm from the opioid crisis, and 11 attorneys representing opioid manufacturers and distributors. Their assignment is daunting: broker a quick and meaningful deal that earmarks money for all parties who’ve been affected by the flood of opioids into the US marketplace over the last 15 years.

Johnson & Johnson Talc Use Will Kill Plaintiff Eventually Per Experts in NJ Talc Trial

>An occupational medicine expert told a New Jersey state court jury this week that a man alleging Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder contains asbestos faces a painful death from mesothelioma, and that the disease was caused by his daily use of J&J’s products. According to plaintiff expert occupational health M.D. Jacqueline Moline, of the Feinstein Institute of Medical Research testified on behalf of plaintiff Stephen Lanzo, to support his claim that J&J’s products, including its baby powder, contained the asbestos that caused his mesothelioma. Earlier this week, another plaintiff expert, William Longo, an electron microscopist told jurors Tuesday that he found asbestos in more than half of the 32 samples of Johnson & Johnson talcum powder products he had examined during a trial alleging that using J&J talc caused him to develop mesothelioma, In the trials fourth week, Mr. Longo was called to the stand as a materials science and electron microscopy expert to support plaintiff Stephen Longo’s claim that J&J is responsible for his mesothelioma, an asbestos-related disease that is fatal.

>Lynn Hartman, the woman who won a $28 million verdict in December 2017, in the first Philadelphia bellwether trial over injuries linked to the blood thinner Xarelto has argued the Pennsylvania judge Michael Erdos, who threw out her damages award ignored evidence that additional warnings would not have changed her doctor’s decision to prescribe the medication. In a January 9th hearing Judge Erdos ruled for defense on their Motion to Vacate the Judgment on various grounds, and during the same hearing the judge also ruled on plaintiff trial counsel trial misconduct matters, which resulted in various sanctions against certain members of Ms. Hartman’s trial team.

>Several New Jersey counties and unions have filed suits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers in New Jersey state courts, which is outside of the Federal MDL Opiate Prescription MDL 280, in the last 30 days, accusing Purdue of sparking the opioid epidemic with deceptive marketing practices that the others eventually adopted. The claims in NJ sate court appear to be a strategic move to provide local governmental entities with a home court advantage versus jumping into the every growing MDL 2804, where Judge Polster has already moved the parties into settlement talks. There are now many other counties and states that have decided to litigate opioid claims in their own state courts versus joining the masses in the federal MDL, how this plays out in the long run remains to be seen. Several county and state court suits originally placed in the Opiate MDL have already been remanded back to state courts by the federal court.

>A Johnson & Johnson unit on Tuesday urged the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to leave standing a recent decision jeopardizing thousands of pending lawsuits by rolling back the clock on when claims of abnormal breast growth allegedly linked to the antipsychotic drug Risperdal began to expire. The justices are weighing whether to hear an appeal of a November ruling from the state’s Superior Court finding that a two-year statute of limitations of Risperdal-related lawsuits, more than 6,600 of which are pending in Philadelphia County, should have started the Statute of Limitations clock, which if upholds the decisions, will cause the dismissal of many of the cases in the Phila court Risperdal docket. J&J has not fared well to date in the Risperdal cases, with verdicts against now reaching the hundreds of millions of dollars and a recent ruling that Punitive damages are now permitted for many cases. J&J’s Janssen R&D division is also facing thousands of suit in the Xarelto litigation also filed in the Phila Court of Common Pleas docket.

>A Pennsylvania appeals court on Tuesday rejected efforts by a Johnson & Johnson unit to challenge expert testimony relied on by jurors in finding that the antipsychotic drug Risperdal had caused a Maryland boy to grow female breast tissue. A three-judge Superior Court panel shot down arguments from Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. that Dr. Francesco DeLuca had improperly relied on an 8-year-old photograph to conclude that Nicholas Murray had been suffering from gynecomastia, or the abnormal growth of female breast tissue in males, at the time the drug was prescribed. However the Superior Court panel did rule that the Murray v. Janssen Pharmaceuticals, case would go back to the trial court for further determination as to the jury award cap based on Maryland law, wher the plaintiff resides, and taking into account the recent Superior Court ruling that permits punitive damages in the Risperdal litigation. The Murray trial which was the third case to go to trial in the Risperdal mass tort docket in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The plaintiff was initially awarded a $1.75 million verdict, which was later reduced by the trial court to $680,000, pursuant to the Maryland statute capping damages. The unanimous panel rejected defendant Janssen Pharmaceutical’s attempt to overturn the verdict and affirmed the trial judge’s decision to limit the jury award based on a Maryland law that caps noneconomic damages. However, citing its decision in a case last month that opened the doors for Risperdal plaintiffs to seek recovery of punitive damages, Judge John Bender remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether plaintiff Nicholas Murray, a Maryland resident, should be allowed to seek punitive damages in the case.

>Drug distributor Cardinal Health has exacerbated the opioid epidemic by filling suspicious drug orders and neglecting to alert the authorities about them, Kentucky’s attorney general claimed in a suit filed Monday in state court. Andy Beshear, lead plaintiff counsel claims Cardinal shipped massive opioid orders throughout Kentucky for years, that were unusually large, frequent and deviated from a past pattern, shunning its own data and “common sense” in favor of profits and market share. Beshear had previously sued McKesson Corp., who along with Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen, distributes 85 percent of the country’s prescription opiates, and are alleged to have engaged in an organized and boardroom acknowledged policy of not reporting massive opiate order increases or failing to accurately track the millions of opiate pills that made their way into so many small towns in the region of Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio. How the drug distribution monitors at these companies couldn’t recognize that often 2 million plus opioid tablets were being shipped to towns that had populations of less than 2,000 remains as the big question, that nobody at these Fortune 50 companies will admit to or acknowledge was an issue. The lack of oversight and re[porting took place during the last 15 years of record breaking profits where billions of dollars in revenue were collected year in and year out by drug distribution companies.

>Federal Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer enterd CMO No. 13 on February 12, 2018 placing a stay on proceeding in MDL 2272, pending the outcome of the finalization of the settlement discussion and a full resolution of the Zimmer NexGen Knee litigation. Lead counsel in the Zimmer NexGen litigation on Feb. 6 told Judge Pallmeyer, that they have reached an agreement in principle that will potentially resolve all MDL cases and similar cases filed in state court as of Jan. 15, 2018. If approved, the settlement will end seven years of litigation, during which some 300 plaintiffs alleged the engineering changes that Zimmer made to allow a greater degree of flexibility in its NexGen components in fact caused greater stress on the knee implants. The NexGen high-flex components theoretically allow patients to bend their knees by 155 degrees, while standard NexGen components provide for up to 125 degrees of bending, according to the plaintiffs.

The Zimmer NexGen knee replacement system has been on the market, almost half a million people in the US alone have had Zimmer knee implants. However, the Zimmer knee replacement, namely the NexGen CR-Flex Porous Femoral component, has been linked to a variety of problems, from loosening of the implant to failure of the replacement knee, requiring revision surgery, as the plaintiffs in the MDL also allege.

The case is MDL 2272 Re: Zimmer NexGen Knee Implant Products Liability Litigation, (MDL Docket No. 2272, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois)

(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA) On February 13, 2018, the Orange County Superior Court rejected efforts by opioid manufacturers to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Santa Clara County Counsel and the Orange County District Attorney on behalf of the People of the State of California. The lawsuit, filed in May 2014, alleges that the defendants—including opioid manufacturers Purdue Pharma L.P., Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Endo Health Solutions, Inc., and Actavis PLC—engaged in a deceptive marketing scheme that trivialized the risks of opioids, resulted in rampant over-prescribing, and led to a nationwide epidemic of opioid abuse and addiction.

“The court’s ruling puts an end to years of delay tactics by the defendants,” said Santa Clara County Counsel James R. Williams. “Now we will finally be able to move forward with the litigation and obtain key documents demonstrating the manufacturers’ misconduct. This is a critical step in addressing the opioid crisis that plagues California and the nation, and we will fight to hold opioid manufacturers accountable for their actions.”

STATE COURTS AHEAD OF FEDERAL OPIATE LITIGATION

In addition to the California counties suing in state court there are more than 200 counties from across the country as well as 30 major cities that have filed suits against opioid manufacturers in Opiate Prescription Multidistrict Litigation MDL 2804, pending in the US District Court of Northern Ohio in front of Judge Dan Polster, see Prescription Opiates MDL 2804 Briefcase. In addition to governmental entities, Judge Polster has also permitted unions and hospitals to join in the consolidated opioid litigation against Purdue Pharma, et al. The age of “Profits Before Patients” by Big Pharma may finally have started to come to an end, but it will not occur with very aggressive legal tactics and maneuvering by the opioid makers defense teams.

INSURERS ARE FIGHTING BACK

Earlier this year Travelers Insurance and St Paul Fire and Marine Insurance scored a legal victory when they were granted a declaratory judgment win related to defending Watson and it’s parent company Activis, Inc in the Orange County-Santa Clara County litigation, after the California Appellate Court declared the Traveller’s/St Paul opioid coverage policy void due to the “Watson’s Deliberate Conduct” in relation to sales and marketing of opioid prescription drugs, which was determined to be improper. The decision also voided the Watson-Activis coverage in the City of Chicago vs. Watson et al, in Chicago federal court, see California Appeals Court Denies Insurance Coverage For Opioid Drug Makers Defense. This may be a trend for insurance carriers as they’ve filed other legal action to void coverage on behalf of opioid drug makers including Insys Therapeutics, Inc and defense of its Subsys fentanyl fast acting drug.

OPIOID RX DRUG MAKERS CHANGING TACTICS

The ruling comes the same week that Purdue Pharma, maker of the opioid OxyContin, announced that it will cut its salesforce in half and stop promoting opioids to doctors. The lawsuit brought by the Santa Clara County Counsel and the Orange County District Attorney was among the first lawsuits brought by government officials to hold opioid manufacturers responsible for their role in the opioids crisis. Manufacturers like Purdue now face pressure from hundreds of additional lawsuits nationwide.

The lawsuit was filed on May 21, 2014, against major opioid manufacturers. (People of the State of California v. Purdue Pharma, et al., Orange County Superior Court, Case No. 30-2014-00725287-CU-BT-CXC.) In 2015, defendants moved to stay the lawsuit, and the case was stayed until October 2016, when the court partially lifted the stay to consider defendants’ arguments that the case should be dismissed. The court has now lifted the stay entirely, and its ruling allows the lawsuit to go forward.

UP TO $500 BILLION SETTLEMENT

The current “Opiate Prescription Litigation MDL 2804” is being compared to the 1998 Tobacco Litigation settlement where Big Tobacco paid a settlement of $200 billion to cities, states and other governmental entities. The Opioid Litigation is expected to reach settlement figures of 3 to 4 times that amount, projected to be at the $500 billion plus figure, due to the rampant corporate boardroom directed policies that flooded the US marketplace for the last 15 years. Corporate sales and marketing policies and lack of oversight, enabled hundreds of millions of opioid prescription drugs to reach all areas of the country, thereby causing in excess of 100 thousand deaths and unknown catastrophic economic damages in every corner of the United States.